Rethinking Youth Unemployment: What Our Community Survey Told Us

Government responses to employment in amongst Victorias African Australian youth has often focused on long-term unemployment and supporting people who have struggled to enter the workforce. While this is an important challenge for some community members, including older people, recent migrants and people facing language barriers, Ubuntu Project’s research with more than 100 young African-Australians highlighted a different employment challenge.

Our research found that many young people were not necessarily struggling to get a job. Instead, they were struggling to access the right jobs and employment that matched their interests, aspirations and longer-term goals.

The survey data from Flemington and North Melbourne reinforced this. Among the 100 respondents captured in this particular survey more than 90% had previously been employed. The responses also highlighted barriers including limited work experience, lack of opportunities, access to referees, discrimination and difficulty finding suitable employment.

Through our broader consultations, we identified a pattern of what we describe as cyclical unemployment. Young people could find work, often in casual or entry-level positions they had little interest in, work long enough to meet an immediate financial goal such as buying new fashionable clothes, saving for a holiday or covering personal expenses and then leave. Months later, they would return to the employment market and repeat the cycle.

This changed how we thought about the problem. For these young people, simply placing them into any job was unlikely to create sustainable employment.

The challenge is therefore not only about employment access. It is about providing young African-Australian Victorians with the networks, work experience, knowledge, skills and individual support needed to identify and pursue employment they genuinely value.

Our employment programs are designed around this understanding: not simply helping young people get jobs, but helping them build pathways towards employment they want to stay in, develop through and build a future around.